Overexposing the background is 2 stops is nothing for current negative films.
Also, your child is your subject matter, not some random clutter in the background.
Exposure should always be biased to your subject.
Do you have a lightmeter that does flash?
Place it on your child's face and point it to the camera, and fire the flash.
Look what the meter says and transfer those settings to the camera.
You'll always get excellent results that way.
Overexposing the background is 2 stops is nothing for current negative films.
You see, I keep hearing this everywhere. I'm far from being an expert in film photography, but my experience (only a few rolls) is that the skies will get overblown with 2 stops or sometimes less of overexposure. I'm not saying that everybody is wrong, I'm just stating what my experience have been so far.
giannisg2004 is right, but this isn't just a film photography dilemma. Balancing ambient light and flash is tricky with film and digital. Newer TTL flash systems make it easier to achieve a balance but you really need to understand the underlying principles at work. A good resource althought very digitally biased is strobist.com, everything there can be applied to film photography. You can use a dslr along side your EM to speed up the learning curve, also as previously mentioned a flash meter is a valuable tool for this. I use a Sekonic L-558 if I have no DSLR with me. One last thing, a higher sync speed is going to help immensely... if you are doing this type of photography a lot or if your are not completely attached to the EM.. consider a FE2 or similar (with a 1/250 sync speed).
I'll second what's already been said, and add that a ND filter can be quite useful in situations like this.
Bottom line for me is that if you want to take a quick snap in challenging lighting, then the modern TTL stuff (particularly, IMHO, the stuff from Nikon) is simply magic. Works a dream.
If you want to create a more composed and deliberate photograph, that's easily done too, but it takes more time and care. The essence of the problem is always that the ambient scene has higher EV than the subject. If you can't knock that down with a high shutter speed (you say you are locked in to 1/90s, but the same problem exists with any focal plane shutter camera), then a ND filter is a good option....if you have enough flash power to overcome it on the subject.
If the subject you are shooting is in shade and you open up 2 stops to make that look right, then yes the skies will be 2 stops overexposed in relation to the rest of the picture and they will get blown out.
But if you are looking at a normal shot already and take it 2 stops overexposed, everything is overexposed proportionally and the skies are no worse - in relationship to the rest of the picture.
Not exactly Hollywood budget level stuff, but I find myself doing more and more shooting like this...
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Fill flash with focal plane shutter cameras is always a challenge.
And it is even a bit of challenge with leaf shutter cameras.
You need powerful flashes, and you are forced to work in restrictive circumstances.
Reflectors make way more sense.
By the way, I don't think the situation you describe is a fill-flash situation. If your entire main subject is in a large shadow, but you also want to record properly a fully illuminated background, you need to add enough light to replace the shadowed area with full light. That requires movie set lighting, not fill flash.
Fill flash is intended to fill small areas of shadow that are surrounded by fully illuminated areas. You use it to soften harsh, contrasty lighting, or to provide some localized front lighting to a predominantly backlit subject.
But note, however, that that is with a leaf shutter.
Bill, I like your black and white idea.
On your second comment, I agree that its all overexposed proportionally but the difference with skies is that the detail is almost gone, if not totally gone.
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